And Thus "Local Writers' Group" Is A Thing

Sorry, folks. I legitimately forgot that I didn't write an actual blog update on Sunday. So, how about I kick my butt in gear, huh?

Well, last week both nothing and a lot happened. Simply put, pretty much all of my writing advancement occurred on just one day.

Last week most of my downtime was used cleaning the apartment yet again. I sprinkled in more beta-reading for ChibiSunnie throughout the week; mostly during work breaks. I FINALLY finished reading but ONE of her stories this past Saturday and sent her the notes first thing Sunday morning after dropping Hubby off at work.

Even after roughly a nine-month wait, she was insanely grateful for the edit. The woman is mad patient. Then again, she's one of my readers, so I guess she has to be...

I did stuff in X-Future. Nothing really major to talk about, but there was slow progress with my characters there. I'm really starting to hear Crystal's snarky, insanely blunt voice in my head. So there's that. Either way, it meant non-zero day, even if it was a pathetically small amount of writing.

Then again, No More Zero Days focuses on advancing towards your end goal every day. Not only is just a little bit of writing daily a way to get non-zero days, but actually developing something more. The fact that a character whose voice has escaped me this past year is finally in my head... That's kinda big, right?

I sure and heck hope so because I hit my first zero-day this past Friday.

I was so determined to get this local writing group idea off the ground that I pushed and prodded - although, arguably there wasn't really much need of either - until we determined that this past Friday would be our inaugural meeting.

This is why I did so much cleaning this week. Dear LORD did I need to clean so we had some space to work. I was all geared up. I had the day off. I spent the whole time racing around the place organizing and mentally coming up with talking points for the group.

Then poor Ronoxym had car troubles, which meant neither he nor Cyhyr would be able to make it to the meeting. That just left Omnibladestrike, but his work day left him exhausted. We debated having our first meeting over Skype, but decided to just postpone.

Sadly, I was so fixated on the idea of having the writing group meeting and having THAT be my "something to do with writing" that I never got around to actually do any writing. Thus I went to bed with this realization and going "shoot. Zero day...."

It all worked out though. I got home from work on Saturday to discover that Ron could borrow a car for he and Cyhyr to show up, and Omni was free. It wasn't until that evening, but we managed to get our first ever Writers' Block meeting.

We focused mostly on Omni and his story. Partially because Cyhyr wasn't at a point where she felt she was really struggling - except for one component that we were able to tackle fairly easily - and Ron kept being ADHD by hopping on to Tumblr and talking to Hubby. We also focused on Omni because he seemed the most in need of the help of the group; both in actual writing advice for his story, and in encouragement to get back to writing in the first place.

I sure hope we helped. He seemed a bit bummed and unsure of himself even after our meeting, but I think this might be really good for him. Here's hoping.

We ended the meeting by having each person come up with a goal they wish to accomplish by this week's Friday Skype meeting. Yup, we're doing a monthly in-person meeting, and then the other three weeks we'll be Skyping in order to check in on everyone's weekly goal progress. I'm excited to see how this goes.

Anyway, Cyhyr is trying to create a character whose sole purpose is NOT to be killed off. Apparently she's gotten so bad with character deaths in her story that Ron started calling her "Georgette R.R.Martin". Omni is attempting the Non-Zero Days method that's been really kicking my butt in to gear. Ron is just attempting to make progress on ONE of his active Works In Progress before starting up yet another one.

I swear, Chibi and I need to show Ron how we build a Plot Bunny farm, because his are all running rampant... He started at least one new story during our meeting on Saturday! Cyhyr literally had to take his notebook away to stop him! That's when he wandered over to talk to Hubby instead...

So, here's hoping Ron is keeping up with his project, and also hoping that means he'll advance either the story he posted on his blog nearly a month ago, or he'll finally continue on with the Willow/Devon story he also hasn't updated in a month. Knowing my luck, he worked more on a story I haven't read yet... Oh well, as long as he learns that he needs to COMPLETE stories, not just start them.

Nearly every writer can tell you that STARTING stories is the easy part, it's COMPLETING THEM that's hard.

Yes, yes, all you What Is Truly Meant To Be fans, I feel your death glares and hear your mutters of "EXACTLY!"

So, now we are up to me. I have been doing a lot of Non-Zero days lately, but it's all "little bit here and a little bit there". I write on the forum. I research. I plot out. I have writing meetings. I beta read. I even started up a dossier of my characters.

It has their basics: name, height, age, weight, eye/hair color, etc. It also has very detailed physical descriptions, complete with exact locations of scarring and the like. The descriptions even include the character's normal wardrobe. The dossier pages are completed with mini-backstories and personality overviews. All of these components are important in knowing how the character looks, right down to how they hold themselves. I'm going to then give the dossier to a friend who is an art student. That way the next time she wants to just doodle she can flip to a character and draw. No pressure for her, just a handy way for her to break through creative blocks and a sly way for me to get "free commissions" of my characters.

I'm off track here... what I was getting at was that I was advancing my writing in just enough of a way for me to claim "Non-Zero day" but not to the point of actually completing any form of prose. So, that is my goal for this week: Write out some prose.

I already did that yesterday. I spent a great deal of time working on a few solo-sessions on the forum. I might turn the one in to yet another in-canon snippet. However, I do have another prose that I've been plotting out in my head. One that won't show up on FanFiction because it's actually original work.

HUH!?

Yeah! ORIGINAL WORK!

One of the things I've been working on since last week is coming up with the Creation Story of Gyateara. The trick here is to write out what actually happened and then determine how much of that "fact" is stated in the tale that humans know. Do they know the truth? Do they only have the key parts correct? Are they completely wrong about how their world was created? The gods are very much real in their world; they have relics and avatars to prove the existence of the gods. So does that mean the Creation Story is more than simple allegory for them?

Be it the "Actual Story" or a more simplistic "What Humans Know", I'll have the Creation Story done - at least a first draft of it - by this Friday's meeting. THAT is my true goal for the week. If I accomplish my goal I should have something new for you folks to read come this Sunday.

Well, maybe next Wednesday... I'm having a harder and harder time completing my Sunday blog posts when I have to work on Sunday. Wednesdays I'm up first thing in the morning to bring Hubby to work and then I have tons of hours to kill before having to pick him up again. I also seem to be in my highest writing energy first thing in the morning or late at night.

We'll see how many more Sunday posts get bumped to Wednesday. If it becomes a trend more then the exception I'll just change my update days....

Either way, stay tuned.